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PsychologyMust Read
intermediate

Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands

van Lommel, Pim et al. (2001)

Published
Dec 15, 2001
Journal
The Lancet · Vol. 358 · No. 9298
DOI
10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8
View Original

At a GlanceAI

344 resuscitated cardiac patients in ten Dutch hospitals, 18% with NDEs, followed up at 2 and 8 years.

SummaryAI

Van Lommel and colleagues prospectively included 344 consecutive patients resuscitated after cardiac arrest. 62 (18%) reported an NDE and 41 (12%) a core experience. Occurrence was not linked to duration of arrest or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death, and was more frequent in younger patients. Patients with an NDE were more likely to die within 30 days. Follow-up interviews after 2 and 8 years showed a slow transformation process that differed from survivors without an NDE. The authors argue that a purely physiological cause such as anoxia would make NDEs far more common among clinically dead patients.

Method SnapshotAI

Prospective multicentre cohort with matched longitudinal follow-up and WCEI scoring.

BackgroundAI

Ring's WCEI; basic epidemiological study design.

In Collections

Psychology28 papers

Near-death experiences: reports, measurement and explanations

Some people who come close to death later report leaving their body, a tunnel, a bright light, meeting deceased relatives or a review of their life. This collection follows how psychology and medicine have studied these reports: from the first case collections (Moody, Ring) and the Greyson NDE Scale, through prospective studies of cardiac arrest survivors, to neurobiological, psychological and cultural explanations, distressing NDEs, and what changes in people's lives afterwards. What NDEs are is still debated, and the verdicts here are ours. Terms: * NDE: near-death experience * OBE: out-of-body experience * WCEI: Ring's Weighted Core Experience Index, an early measure of NDE depth

ES
Evgeny Smirnov

A key paper in a prestigious journal that took NDE research to a new level. Careful design. Still, it leaves more questions than answers.

— ES